Europe six-up, on brink of triumph

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Sergio Garcia removed the flag from the 18th hole and waved it over his head. Padraig Harrington tossed his glove and cap into a crowd that draped itself in European flags and sang "Ole, Ole" from the top of his lungs. Darren Clarke lit another cigar.

There was no need to wait for this juggernaut of a European team to celebrate at the Ryder Cup. The final day looks like a mere formality with Europe leading 11-5.

"I never in my wildest dreams would have thought we would have a six-point lead," captain Bernhard Langer said.

Two English rookies - Paul Casey and David Howell - in their Ryder Cup debuts delivered the pivotal point on Saturday morning. Garcia, Lee Westwood and Europe's reliable stars pounded the United States team in the afternoon.

When it was over, Europe had a six-point lead - its largest ever - and needed to win only three of the final day's 12 singles matches to capture the cup.

"It is possible? Sure, it's possible," Phil Mickelson said of a US comeback. "Is it likely? Probably not. For all intents and purposes, we've likely lost the cup. But we're going to try to win it."

It was the largest two-day lead since 1967, when Ben Hogan opened the Ryder Cup by introducing his team as "the 10 greatest golfers in the world".

The best 12 this week at Oakland Hills belong to Europe.

Europe has so thoroughly outplayed the home team that Casey asked to go off first with hopes of playing Tiger Woods, telling Langer he had beaten him in the two tournaments they had played this year.

US captain Hal Sutton will send out his singles players in the order they qualified - from Woods at No.1 to Stewart Cink at No.12. Whenever a team is this far behind, it usually puts its best players at the top of the line-up to try to create momentum.

Trouble is, Sutton has no idea who his best players are at this Ryder Cup.

Perhaps that's why Sutton did not bother to wag his finger and offer an ominous prediction that "I've got a good feeling about this", a la captain Ben Crenshaw at Brookline in 1999 when he was behind 10-6 and the Americans came back to win.

Making the task more difficult is that this European cup team is deeper than the '99 team, which included Jean van de Velde, Jarmo Sandelin and Andrew Coltart, none of whom got off the bench in the team formats.

"We have more depth on our team than we've probably ever had before," Langer said.

"We might not quite have the superstars who won all the majors in the '80s and early '90s, but we have great players."

Sutton looked beat; he was out of tough talk.

"I pushed them as hard as I could," he said. "We almost responded this morning, and we lost energy after that."